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Got cha , What about quality of glass for the money ? Think the compact razor hd 50 compact is the best bang for your buck?

It all depends what you are going to use it for... if you are going to get one spotter to do everything my recomendation would be the razor 65. For the price you can't beat it.
The 50mm is a lightweight compact spotter that is geared more towards someone counting ounces. 11x-33x

The 65mm is a middle of the road. It is 23 ounces heavier than the 50 and 17 ounces lighter than the 85. 16x-48x

The 85mm is big scope that has a larger FOV than its smaller brothers. It will do excellent in low light and long distances but weighs over 4 lbs.

There is a lot more to all these scopes. If you have any specific questions let us know.

Hey BB, What is your experience on the vortex 2x doubler. I have an older 25X 50mm fixed leupold that I like carrying, I just wish I had a little more power sometimes. Do you know what the diameter of the piece that slips over the eye piece is? Have you looked thru this ?

Hey BB, What is your experience on the vortex 2x doubler. I have an older 25X 50mm fixed leupold that I like carrying, I just wish I had a little more power sometimes. Do you know what the diameter of the piece that slips over the eye piece is? Have you looked thru this ?

I have looked through it. It fits the standard Vortex eyepiece diameter, and I don't know, but I think it is too small for the old Luepy roof spotters. My impression was it would work for a quick look, but degrades image quality noticeably.

Thanks....super helpful review to actually see them side by side. Basically what I picked up is if you don't own an ed 50 already, it looks as if the vortex is the way to go with slightly better glass and the fine focus option.

The only con I picked up is that roll down eyepiece? How big of deal is that. It looked like a pain in the butt compared to the twist up on the minox. All in all a rather sloppy design flaw? But, not enough to dissuade you from the vortex I guess.

From looking at the video, they have the stiff eye cup because of the cover - the eye cup has to be stiff enough to hold on to the cover. Obviously, they put the priority on the cover.

They may not have used the twist eye cup to keep it simple or because of legal considerations, Nikon or Minox may have a patent on the design or some key part of it.

Ah, the nostalgic aroma of a yak dung stove brewing up some tea full of herbs best left untranslated.
From the Zen Backpacking Site